Cambodia’s famous temple of Angkor Wat is one of the world’s largest religious monuments, visited by over 2 million tourists each year.

It was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II, one of the most famous kings of the Angkorian civilization that lasted from approximately the ninth to 15th centuries. The structure is so strongly associated with Cambodian identity even today that it appears on the nation’s flag.

For many years, historians placed the collapse of the Angkor civilization in 1431, when Angkor’s capital city was sacked by the Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya and abandoned. The idea that the Angkorian capital was abandoned also played a part in the 19th-century colonial interpretation of Angkor as a civilization forgotten by the Cambodians and left to decay in the jungle. Many tourists still come to Angkor Wat with an outdated romanticized notion of a deserted ruin emerging from the mysterious jungle.

But scholars have long argued against this interpretation, and archaeological evidence is shedding even more light on the decline of the Angkorian civilization. The process was much longer and more complex than previously imagined; Angkor’s collapse may be better described as a transformation.

By looking at the events associated with this one particular temple, archaeologists like me are able to see a microcosm of some of the broader regional transformations that took place across Angkor.

What happened to the Angkor civilization?

Researchers believe the Angkor civilization was established in A.D. 802. Its heartland and capital city was on the banks of the Tonle Sap Lake in northwest Cambodia. The Angkorian state was founded and grew during a period of favorable climate with abundant rainfall. At its height, Angkorian rulers might have controlled a large portion of mainland Southeast Asia.

The Angkor civilization was booming in the early 1100s when construction began on the Angkor Wat temple site. Built as a re-creation of the Hindu universe, its most striking features are the five sandstone towers that rise above the four temple enclosures, representing the peaks of Mount Meru, the center of the universe. The temple is surrounded by a large moat symbolizing the Sea of Milk from which “amrita,” an elixir of immortality, was created.

But by the end of the 13th century, numerous changes were taking place. The last major stone temple at Angkor was constructed in 1295, and the latest Sanskrit inscription dates to the same year. The last inscription in Khmer, the language of Cambodia, appears a few decades later in 1327. Constructing stone temples and writing inscriptions are elite activities – these last instances at the Angkorian capital happened during the region-wide adoption of Theravada Buddhism that replaced Hinduism.

This religious shift disrupted the pre-existing Hindu-based power structures. Emphasis moved from state-sponsored stone temples and royal bureaucracy to community-based Buddhist pagodas, built from wood. At the same time, maritime trade with China was increasing. The relocation of the capital further south, near the modern capital of Phnom Penh, allowed rulers to take advantage of these economic opportunities.

Paleoclimate research has highlighted region-wide environmental changes that were taking place at the time, too. A series of decades-long droughts, interspersed with heavy monsoons, disrupted Angkor’s water management network meant to capture and disburse water.

One study of the moats around the walled urban precinct of Angkor Thom suggest the city’s elite were already departing by 14th century, almost 100 years before the supposed sack of the capital by Ayutthaya.

Excavations in the Angkor Wat temple enclosure

My colleagues and I, in collaboration with the government’s APSARA Authority that oversees Angkor Archaeological Park, began excavating within Angkor Wat’s temple enclosure in 2010.

Instead of focusing on the temple itself, we looked at the occupation mounds surrounding the temple. In the past, people would have constructed houses and lived on top of these mounds. LiDAR surveys in the region clarified that Angkor Wat, and many other temples including nearby Ta Prohm, were surrounded by a grid-system of mounds within their enclosures.

Over three field seasons, my colleagues and I excavated these mounds, uncovering remains of dumps of ceramics, hearths and burnt food remains, post holes and flat-lying stones that might have been part of a floor surface or path.

It is not clear yet who lived on these mounds, as we have not yet found artifacts that give clues as to the inhabitants’ occupations. Inscriptions describe the thousands of people needed to keep the temples functioning, so we suspect that many of those who lived on the mounds worked in some capacity in the Angkor Wat temple, perhaps as religious specialists, temple dancers, musicians or other laborers.

During our excavations, we collected burnt organic remains, primarily pieces of wood charcoal that were associated with different layers or features like hearths. Using radiocarbon dating, we identified dates for 16 charcoal pieces. We used these dates to build a more fine-grained chronology of when people were using the temple enclosure space – providing a more nuanced idea of the timing of occupation at Angkor Wat.

Radiocarbon dates tell a different story

Our dates show that the landscape around Angkor Wat might have initially been inhabited in the 11th century, prior to the temple’s construction in the early 12th century. Then the Angkor Wat temple enclosure’s landscape, including the mound-pond grid system, was laid out. People subsequently inhabited the mounds.

Then we have a gap, or break, in our radiocarbon dates. It’s difficult to line it up with calendar years, but we think it likely ranges from the late 12th or early 13th century to the late 14th or early 15th century. This gap coincides with many of the changes taking place across Angkor. Based on our excavations, it seems that the occupation mounds were abandoned or their use was transformed during this period.

However, the temple of Angkor Wat itself was never abandoned. And the landscape surrounding the temple appears to be reoccupied by the late 14th or early 15th centuries, during the period Angkor was supposedly sacked and abandoned by Ayutthaya, and used until the 17th or 18th centuries.

Angkor Wat as a microcosm of the civilization

As one of the most important Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat can be seen as a kind of bellwether for broader developments of the civilization.

It seems to have undergone transformations at the same time that the broader Angkorian society was also reorganizing. Significantly, though, Angkor Wat was never abandoned. What can be abandoned is the tired cliche of foreign explorers “discovering” lost cities in the jungle.

While it seems clear that the city experienced a demographic shift, certain key parts of the landscape were not deserted. People returned to Angkor Wat and its surrounding enclosure during the period that historical chronicles say the city was being attacked and abandoned.

To describe Angkor’s decline as a collapse is a misnomer. Ongoing archaeological studies are showing that the Angkorian people were reorganizing and adapting to a variety of turbulent, changing conditions.

Alison Kyra Carter

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon

Cultural influences in India and China helped shape images of the teacher whose lessons are at the heart of Buddhism

By Gregory Elder |

Q: Why is it that pictures of the Buddha look so different from one another? In most pictures or statues, he is quite a plump guy and in others he is absolutely emaciated.

A: Today’s question comes from a local graduate student, and it calls to mind the proverb among scholars that, “If the Buddha of Japan were to meet the Buddha of India, the two men would not recognize each other.” Of course, part of the reason why depictions are different is that they come from different national artistic traditions. This author has seen African crucifixes with a black Christ and European crucifixes with white Christs, depending on who made them. However, with Buddhism, there is a little more to the matter than this.

Siddhartha Gautama was an Indian nobleman living in the fifth century B.C., in the north of that country. Sometime in the sixth century B.C., after deep inner searching which involved severe fasting, he achieved enlightenment, an escape from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth of reincarnation. When other monks asked him what had happened to him, he replied, “I am awake.” The word for “awakened” was something like “Buddha” and the name stuck. It was after this enlightenment that the Buddha began his lifetime of preaching and teaching the path he had discerned. What he actually experienced is another subject which would require more pages, but to answer this question it is important to locate the origins of Buddhism in the traditions of Hindu asceticism.

Hinduism is an extremely diverse religion, or perhaps a set of religions, in that it honors a great many gods, has an abundance of rituals, and several distinct paths to holiness, such as study, married sensuality, labor for the good of all and, of course, asceticism. Pictures of Indian mystics can show extremely emaciated men, shriveled up from years of intense fasting. It is said that the Buddha at the time of his enlightenment was so skinny that one could see all the vertebrae of his spine from looking at the front of his stomach alone. We are not surprised therefore to see Indian pictures of the Buddha as a slender man. We note that the Buddha gave up these extremes of asceticism, but he was still depicted as thinner than what many of us today are.

After the Buddha passed from this world, a number of schools of Buddhism developed, many of which are lost in the sands of time. Islamic invasions in the later centuries also reduced the number of Buddhist monks, whom the invaders called “bald idolaters,” and many temples were lost. The surviving Indian Buddhists came to be known as Theravada Buddhists. This tradition, in Sanskrit, “the way of the elders,” is perhaps the oldest and it emphasized the need for individual enlightenment. This required prayer, fasting and above all meditation. In this tradition the monks are seen as spiritually superior to others because they are further down the path to their own enlightenment. Indian Buddhism therefore emphasizes the image of the slender Buddha to show the importance of renunciation.

Theravada is probably the older of the two main traditions, but the largest is Mahayana Buddhism, which means “the Great Vehicle.” Mahayana taught that enlightenment was possible for ordinary people, and while it was hard to achieve, enlightenment was no longer the domain of the monks. Monasticism was very important, and the monks became the teachers of many. They lived in a Sanga, or monastery, and their life was often near the ordinary people. Mahayana Buddhism would develop into a number of sects, and it was able to absorb a great many gods and goddesses into its universe by identifying them as Bodhisattva, or enlightened souls who chose to return to earth to help us poor suffering rascals along the right path.

Around the time of Christ, Mahayana Buddhist monks made their way across the Himalaya mountains into Tibet and then into China. Here they faced a very different culture and set of religions. Traditional Chinese Taoism saw wealth as a blessing from heaven. Traditional Chinese Confucianism defined the best society as one which was ordered, prosperous and well fed. On the surface, this does not appear to be a fertile ground for Buddhism, but in fact it is a very adaptable religion.

With the Taoist tradition there a great many gods and spirits, who come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For example, there is Tsai Shen, the god of wealth, who is a stout gentleman riding on a tiger, and one should put his image on the east side of the house to attract honest wealth. There is also Cai Shen, the god of prosperity, who is a plump god with a happy face and is often depicted laughing. There are many other such examples, but if you are a Buddhist missionary in China and want to convert the locals, a scrawny Buddha is not going to get many believers. Under Chinese Mahayana we are not surprised to see that the enlightened one is shown a bit chubbier.

Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. This photo is from about 2017.

The Gump’s Buddha, reported to be homeless in a December story in The Chronicle, will soon have a new home. The statue is going to be on the Christie’s auction block on May 29 in Hong Kong. Chris Jehle did the math of converting Hong Kong dollars to U.S. dollars and says the estimate of what it will fetch is $3.9 million to $6.4 million.

“The Gump’s Buddha, property of an American family” is described by Christie’s as a “highly important and monumental imperial gilt-lacquered wood figure of the Medicine Buddha.” Medicine Buddha is a healing and serenity-making practice of Buddhism, personified by a Buddha said to have taken 12 great vows after having attained enlightenment.

The statue, including its pedestal, is 95 inches tall, made of wood painted bronze. It was bought in Kyoto in 1957 by Martin Rosenblatt, an executive and buyer for the store. A previous Buddha had been donated to the Japanese Tea Garden.

The Chronicle reported that when Gump’s was sold (for $8.5 million in 2005), New Yorker John Chachas, one of the investors who bought it, paid extra for the sculpture. By the time Gump’s announced its bankruptcy, last summer, the Buddha had been removed from the store, replaced by a photograph of it. Store personnel were mystified about where the statue had been taken, which is why The Chronicle described it as having vanished. According to Christie’s, “Works acquired at Gump’s not only enhanced — and still enhance — wealthy homes throughout the nation,” but also have wound up “in numerous public galleries.”

 

 

Of course, this is NOT a Buddha.

 

After lighting up Patricia’s Green since May 2018, Charles Gageken’s 50-foot LED light sculpture SQUARED, an arboreal-inspired work noted for its 786 white cubes that change colors, will fell in favor of another piece, Tara Mechani, by local artist Dana Albany.

 

The sculpture, a futuristic female robot inspired by Maria from the silent film Metropolis and the Buddha Tara, most recently made pitstops at Burning Man and Plaza de César Chavez Park in San Jose.

The sculpture is constructed with up of 80 percent recycled materials, which include machine parts and hardware reused from local businesses.

According to a press release from San Francisco Arts Commission, “Inside the figure is a custom-built chandelier made out of a repurposed brass light fixture with arms that have been bent and reworked to extend around the sculpture’s sides to form a ribcage.”

Come nightfall, the sculpture will emanate “a soft warm candelabra glow” that’s meant to represent her heart and soul.

“Playing with the contemporary fascination with technology, the artwork infuses the mechanical with the compassion and empathy associated with the ancient deity,” says Albany. “Tara Mechani challenges us to embrace the future without losing sight of past beauty and ancient wisdom.”

Albany has created and exhibited works for the de Young Museum of Art, the Exploratorium, the California Academy of Sciences, and the San Francisco Airport.

The neighborhood’s upcoming statue—made possible by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Recreation and Park Department, and mandated fees from developers—will be on display at Hayes and Octavia from June 4, 2019 to June 2020.

Cambodian archaeologists have unearthed the remnants of nearly 100 previously undiscovered temples dating from the 6th and 7th centuries in Kratie province’s historical Samphu Borak area, former capital of the pre-Angkor Empire Chenla period.

Thuy Chanthourn, the deputy director of the Institute of Arts and Culture of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said the remnants of the temples had not been recorded in earlier Cambodian or French archaeological studies, including Inventaire descriptif des monuments du Cambodge by E Lunet de Lajonquiere from 1902-11.

They had also not been registered in the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts’ list of ancient temples.

“The French registered more than 10 temples in the northern Samphu Borak area, while the provincial department of culture discovered more than 50 others. I have found nearly 100 temples that have not been unearthed before. We will carry out further inspections and studies,” Chanthourn said.

He said the temples were constructed from sandstone and dedicated to the Brahmanism religion of early Hinduism.

Only the foundations remained of Trapaing Prey, the final Chenla-era temple in the Samphu Borak area discovered by Chanthourn.

He said his team will use the global positioning system (GPS) to carry out in-depth research into the temples and record and preserve them as areas of important historical value.

He said people must be educated as to the importance of the ancient sites as in the past, villagers had damaged them looking for items of worth.

“Local people in the past have dug at the foundations of the temples looking for statues and other valuable relics to sell,” he said.

Royal Academy of Cambodia archaeologists found the ancient foundations as part of their research into the Chenla civilisation that also took them to locations in Kratie, Mondulkiri, Ratanakkiri, Kampong Thom and Kampong Cham provinces, as well as to Vietnam and Laos.

Chanthourn said his team had in previous studies discovered the remains of tangible heritage, including temples, and recorded the intangible ones, such as historical folk tales.

His team last year handed over an ancient inscription from the main temple gate at Samphu Borak to the Kratie provincial department of culture and fine arts for museum study, Chanthourn said.

He said the Chenla period Samphu Borak, on the Mekong River in Kratie province, was yet to be fully researched.

He said the recent discoveries showed that the ancestors of the Cambodian people were truly creators, builders and engineers.